% My experience with gender reassignment surgery, and my trip to Thailand, part 1
% Leah Rowe
% 2018-10-11

Warning: I am quite drunk while I write this. I don't normally blog whilst
drunk, but tonight I thought I'd do something different.

I mean... not really. Only 1 bottle of red wine, and not even good wine. Plus
I'll sober up towards the end of this article, since I anticipate that this
will take several hours to write (because there's a lot of ground to cover). It
takes at least a bottle of strong gin/whiskey to get me drunk... however, since I'm
under the influence, I have to mention this fact. I just randomly felt like
writing this post. I was goingto write it on the weekend (beginning October 18th)
but I wanted to write it now. I don't feel tired yet, and I have nothing else I
feel like doing right now... so here goes.

The week before my last, I wrote about my pre-surgery transition. Now, I will
write about my experience with the surgery itself, and my experience that I had
whilst in Thailand where I had the surgery.

For context behind this post, please read [surgery.md](surgery.md) and
[transition.md](transition.md).

Please also see [littleleah.md](littleleah.md), which is infamous on reddit and
4chan (a fact that I'm quite proud of).

You don't really need to see my vagina in its current state (as I write this
post, I'm 14 weeks into recovery post-op). At this point, the swelling around
my labia is a lot less than it was in the littleleah post. My vagina now looks
like that of a typical cisgender woman's vagina. Everything pretty much works
now too. For instance, I can masturbate now. I have orgasmed many times, and I'm
very happy with everything. I love my genitalia. I feel beautiful.

It's highly likely that I will write a sequel to this blog post, perhaps
several months or even a year from now into the future. My intention with this
specific blog post is to write about my experiences being a post-op trans woman
in the last 14 weeks since I had my surgery.

Here goes :)

<h1>The trip to Thailand</h1>

For many years, I had severe genital dysphoria. Dysphoria is a type of
depression related to ones gender identity versus their assigned gender at birth,
and in my case it was very severe. I was disassociating heavily.

TL;DR I needed a vagina, bad. My last article covers this, so I don't need to
talk in detail here.

For many years, I had worked hard to get to the point where I could get surgery.
Suddenly, it dawned on me a week prior to surgery that I was actually ready.
I had been so focused with simply getting ready for it that I ignored everything
else.

So... come July 29th, I fly out to Thailand. I chose to have my surgery with
Dr. Suporn in Thailand, because he is the best surgeon on earth, or was at the
time when I had my surgery. I chose July 29th because my surgery was on
August 1st, and the flight to Thailand is about 15 hours, plus there are time
zone shifts. Adjusting for Thai timezone, I arrived on July 31st. I didn't have
an extended visa, so I was only allowed to stay in Thailand for up to 30 days.
By booking the flight for the 29th of July, that meant I had the maximum
amount of time in Thailand whilst still having time to prepare once I got there.

My parents drove me to the airport. I flew out from Heathrow airport (in the UK,
since I'm British and Heathrow is the best airport to use when travelling to
Asia).

The night before flying out, I didn't sleep. At the time, I was bogged down in
work and needed to get as much done as possible before I flew. Story of my life.
I was always overworked. I flew to Thailand on zero hours of sleep.

I ate a nice meal at the airport, with my parents. They weren't flying with me,
so I ate with them in a restaurant outside the border. When I went through the
ticket barrier, my parents were obviously worried since that was *it*. My dad
had tears in his eyes, something which I never saw before, and he *hugged me*.
So did my mother. Neither of them are huggers. My parents are usually very
*stoic*, for the most part.

I go through customs, and pretty much just walk straight to the gate outside
where the plane was docked. I get on the flight... and that was it. I was
disassociating heavily, because this was a very fearful part of my life and I
had learned all throughout the years prior to this to suppress my emotions, so
as to cope. I was on *disassociative overdrive* during the flight.

The fact that I was about to finally have a vagina was merely a fact, during
the flight. In other words, it was something which I merely acknowledged as
absolute truth, and no emotions were consciously realized during this time. This
was the same throughout the many months prior to that.

The same cannot be said about my experience after surgery. I lost the ability
to suppress my emotions after that.

And it was amazing. But for now, I'll talk about my experiences in the most
detail that I can. Keep reading this article, and you will know the full extent
of the experiences which I have had.

I say this with finality, but do not be fooled. I am still in the middle of
my recovery from surgery, as I write write this.

<h1>Going through Thai border security</h1>

This, more than the surgery itself, was (and still is) the most scariest
experience I've ever had in my life. I was disassociating heavily until this
point, but then when I went through border security after arriving in Thailand,
I began to feel like I was panicking. I basically thought that I might not be
allowed to pass through security. It was *scary*.

After what seemed like an eternity, the border security officer gave the rubber
stamp of approval and I was officially, legally on Thai soil.

I knew that I was being picked up by an agent of the Suporn clinic, but I
was unsure how to find them. Plus, I was exhausted from having no sleep the
previous night before boarding the flight.

I walked through the lobby area at the airport for what seemed like an eternity,
and then I finally saw a young petite Thai lady holding a sign up that said
*Leah Rowe* on it. Logically, it was extremely unlikely that this sign was
intended for anyone else besides me, since it's highly unlikely that two people
named Leah Rowe would be in the same airport at the same time, so I approached
this young lady and said hello. I confirmed my identity, and then she said:

Follow me.

Which I did. At that point, I was now under the tender care of the Suporn
clinic. They really make sure you're well cared for.

<h1>Psychiatrist in Bankok</h1>

I had already given Suporn my papers from my own psychiatrist (a gender
specialist) confirming the go-ahead for my surgery, but suporn also required
a second approval from a Thai specialist.

I was therefore driven to Bankok, to a hospital located there, where I spoke
to a psychiatrist. I was worried about this, since I was severely sleep deprived
and I thought that this alone might make me seem *unstable* somehow. At each
and every point, including this one, prior to waking up with a vagina, I was
scared *non-stop* that I might be denied my surgery.

The fear of not being permitted to have surgery was extremely apparent (to say
the *very* least) because up until this point, I had only ever dreamed of
having a vagina. The fact that I was physically *in* Thailand, about to have
*actual* surgery, was still a concept at this point. A simple fact. One that I
had not yet internalized.

From the moment I met this person from the clinic, who picked me up at Bankok,
I no longer even had to think. The Suporn clinic handled everything for me.

All I had to do was follow directions.

Ordered into the room with the psychiatrist, I answered a series of questions... the
whole interview lasted about 10 minutes, but it felt like an hour. I said all
of the same things that I had previously said to my therapist in the UK, prior
to my trip. Suporn doesn't really care about anything except whether you're able
to pay for surgery, but he still follows WPATH in the most minimal way possible
so as to avoid being sued. This appointment with the psychiatrist reeked of
*meeting legal requirements*.

I liked this.

The psychiatrist gave me the rubber stamp.

<h1>The trip to the Suporn Clinic</h1>

After the trip to the hospital in Bankok, I was driven to the actual Suporn
Clinic in Chon Buri, where my surgery took place. It was on a Tuesday afternoon,
Thai time, on July 31st 2018, when I arrived at the clinic.

*Tune in next week :P*

It's 1.30AM on October 11th. I need to go to bed. I'm currently trying to reset
my sleeping pattern. Currently I mostly usually go to bed at 3AM.

I'll maybe write the second part to this article tomorrow morning, otherwise
it'll be in a few days or indeed next week.
